Fomenting antipathy

I’m going to agree with Roberta Fonzi (Letters to the Editor, July 11) that the perpetrators of the heinous burning of a Palestinian boy should be referred to as Israelis rather than as Jews. I’m going to go a bit further and say we should also use the same reference when referring to the perpetrators of the massive, inhumane and unjust pogrom of the Palestinian people that has been going on since 1948.

Once again, we are asked to sympathize with Israel in a conflagration where they have suffered zero deaths and the Palestinians have suffered more than 100, as of this writing, greatly weighted with the deaths of civilians, including children.

Israel’s retributive actions over the past 66 years toward the people it stole its land from has proven to be spectacularly inept policy. It has not served to diminish the destructive behavior of people frustrated by a lifetime of occupation; it has only served to foment antipathy and to instill it in new and expanding generations of a mistreated population.